John Russell - Chechnya - Russias War on Terror (BASEES/Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies)

Chechnya Russias War on Terror

The Russo-Chechen wars represent the bloodiest conflict in Europe since the Second World War. Making international headlines only after some terrorist spectacular, the conflict remains unresolved, despite President Putins claim to have normalised the situation. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the war and the issues connected with it. It examines the origins of the conflict historically, and traces how both sides were dragged inexorably into war in the early 1990s. The work discusses the two wars (19941996, and 19992006), the intervening truce and Putins policy of Chechenisation, and shows how a downward spiral of violence has led to a mutually-damaging impasse from which neither side has yet been able satisfactorily to extricate itself. Theories of conflict, especially theories of terrorism and counter-terrorism, are applied and, in conclusion, some alternative resolutions are proposed that might lead to a more just and lasting peace in the region.

John Russell is a Senior Lecturer in Russian Studies and Peace Studies at the University of Bradford.

BASEES/Routledge series on Russian and East European studies

Series editor:

Richard Sakwa, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent

Editorial committee:

Julian Cooper, Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham

Terry Cox, Department of Central and East European Studies, University of Glasgow

Rosalind Marsh, Department of European Studies and Modern Languages, University of Bath

David Moon, Department of History, University of Durham

Hilary Pilkington, Department of Sociology, University of Warwick

Stephen White, Department of Politics, University of Glasgow

Founding editorial committee member:

George Blazyca, Centre for Contemporary European Studies, University of Paisley

This series is published on behalf of BASEES (British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies). The series comprises original, high-quality, research-level work by both new and established scholars on all aspects of Russian, Soviet, post-Soviet and East European Studies in humanities and social science subjects.

1. Ukraines Foreign and Security Policy, 19912000
   Roman Wolczuk
2. Political Parties in the Russian Regions
   Derek S. Hutcheson
3. Local Communities and Post-Communist Transformation
   Edited by Simon Smith
4. Repression and Resistance in Communist Europe
   J.C. Sharman
5. Political Elites and the New Russia
   Anton Steen
6. Dostoevsky and the Idea of Russianness
   Sarah Hudspith
7. Performing Russia Folk Revival and Russian Identity
   Laura J. Olson
8. Russian Transformations
   Edited by Leo McCann
9. Soviet Music and Society under Lenin and Stalin
   The baton and sickle
   Edited by Neil Edmunds
10. State Building in Ukraine
    The Ukrainian parliament, 19902003
    Sarah Whitmore
11. Defending Human Rights in Russia
    Sergei Kovalyov, dissident and human rights commissioner, 19692003
    Emma Gilligan
12. Small-Town Russia
    Postcommunist livelihoods and identities: a portrait of the intelligentsia in Achit, Bednodemyanovsk and Zubtsov, 19992000
    Anne White
13. Russian Society and the Orthodox Church
    Religion in Russia after Communism
    Zoe Knox
14. Russian Literary Culture in the Camera Age
    The word as image
    Stephen Hutchings
15. Between Stalin and Hitler
    Class war and race war on the Dvina, 194046
    Geoffrey Swain
16. Literature in Post-Communist Russia and Eastern Europe
    The Russian, Czech and Slovak fiction of the Changes, 198898
    Rajendra A. Chitnis
17. Soviet Dissent and Russias Transition to Democracy
    Dissident legacies
    Robert Horvath
18. Russian and Soviet Film Adaptations of Literature, 19002001
    Screening the word
    Edited by Stephen Hutchings and Anat Vernitski
19. Russia as a Great Power
    Dimensions of security under Putin
    Edited by Jakob Hedenskog, Vilhelm Konnander, Bertil Nygren, Ingmar Oldberg and Christer Pursiainen
20. Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of 1940
    Truth, justice and memory
    George Sanford
21. Conscience, Dissent and Reform in Soviet Russia
    Philip Boobbyer
22. The Limits of Russian Democratisation
    Emergency powers and states of emergency
    Alexander N. Domrin
23. The Dilemmas of Destalinisation
    A social and cultural history of reform in the Khrushchev era
    Edited by Polly Jones
24. News Media and Power in Russia
    Olessia Koltsova
25. Post-Soviet Civil Society
    Democratization in Russia and the Baltic states
    Anders Uhlin
26. The Collapse of Communist Power in Poland
    Jacqueline Hayden
27. Television, Democracy and Elections in Russia
    Sarah Oates
28. Russian Constitutionalism
    Historical and contemporary development
    Andrey N. Medushevsky
29. Late Stalinist Russia
    Society between reconstruction and reinvention
    Edited by Juliane Frst
30. The Transformation of Urban Space in Post-Soviet Russia
    Konstantin Axenov, Isolde Brade and Evgenij Bondarchuk
31. Western Intellectuals and the Soviet Union, 192040
    From Red Square to the Left Bank
    Ludmila Stern
32. The Germans of the Soviet Union
    Irina Mukhina
33. Re-constructing the Post-Soviet Industrial Region
    The Donbas in transition
    Edited by Adam Swain
34. Chechnya Russias War on Terror
    John Russell

John Russell

First published 2007
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2007 John Russell

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ISBN 0-203-946669-9 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0-415-38064-2 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0-203-94666-9 (ebk)

ISBN13: 978-0-415-38064-5 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-94666-9 (ebk)

To Anna Politkovskaya, just one of the countless innocent victims of this wretched war, the latest chapter of a tragic conflict long needed by nobody save the powerful few.